There has been proposed a parking brake apparatus that includes (a) a braking member that is moved in one direction to pull a brake cable, thereby actuating a packing brake; (b) a ratchet that has a large number of serrations along a moving direction of the braking member, and that is disposed on one of the braking member and a vehicle body-side member; (c) a pawl that is rotatably disposed via a pawl pin on the other one of the braking member and the vehicle body-side member, and that is brought into contact with a locking surface side of the serration in accordance with a tensile force of the brake cable, thereby preventing the braking member from moving backward toward an original position in a direction opposite to the one direction; and (d) a pawl-urging spring that urges the pawl in such a rotational direction that the pawl engages with the ratchet, and in which (e) at the start of braking, at which the braking member is moved in the one direction, every time the pawl relatively climbs over the serration, the pawl is brought into contact with a non-locking surface side of the serration in accordance with an urging force of the pawl-urging spring, wherein (f) the pawl has a triangular engagement tooth that is inserted into a tooth groove of the ratchet, and a second side end surface that faces the non-locking surface of the serration is covered with a synthetic resin except a tip portion of the engagement tooth. In a foot-operated parking brake operation apparatus described in Patent Document 1, which is one example of the above-described parking brake apparatus, each of a pawl and a ratchet is made of a metal material, and a second side end surface of an engagement tooth of the pawl is covered with a synthetic resin, thereby reducing operating noise (successive hitting noise) generated by contact between the pawl and the ratchet at the start of braking, at which a braking member is moved in one direction (at the time of a brake operation of depressing a pedal).